Birth Rites - Exploring the politics and practices of child birth.

Andy Lawrence

Andy losing the plot in India, 2009

Andy Lawrence is a film-maker and a teacher using anthropological knowledge and research methods to explore issues with film and video. His main interest is in birth and death and the wisdom traditions that surround this, with regional specialisation in the UK and India. Andy is Film-maker in Residence at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester in the UK. He is also a Lecturer and plays a leading role in the delivery of the MA in Visual Anthropology, and he is the principal tutor for the two week International Summer School, Film-Making for Fieldwork. Andy studied social anthropology at UCL and visual anthropology at the Granada Centre before working for TV in the UK, USA and the Netherlands. He has worked on many subjects and produced festival winning films. Andy has also worked in drama, collaborating with acclaimed poet Mark Gwynne-Jones to produce the short film, The Message, which looks at the fragile nature of inter-generational transmission of knowledge, and he was a founding member of the artists collective, Psychicbread.

s All Rites Reversed Andy works as a free-lance filmmaker, shooting feature length documentaries on the subject of visual anthropology and continuing to experiment with new methods and technologies. Recent directing credits include the documentary feature, Born - a meditation on childbirth made in collaboration with the radical midwife Judith Kurutac, screened at festivals around the globe. His latest documentary feature, in collaboration with anthropologist Rajive McMullen, is a journey across Northern India in search of Tantrik ideas about birth, death and well-being, The Lover and The Beloved: A Journey Into Tantra is currently screening at film festivals world wide, and is distributed by DER. Andy is now working on a new documentary feature in India, set for release in 2013, and producing shorter experimental films available on Vimeo.

Recent reviews of Andy’s work….

"...his film beautifully captures the confusion and complexity of the male perspective"

Joanna Moorhead, The Guardian 2008

"For once the immediacy of actual childbirth does not eclipse the poignant fact that through this physical, visceral process, a new life begins and another journey starts."

Phoebe Mortimer, 2008

“This is undoubtedly the work that captured my attention more than any other in the exhibition. Andy spent three years working with Judith to produce this powerful piece of film documentary. By using an eclectic range of methods, the film manages to transfix the audience for the full 55 minutes of delivery…..

….Andy is unrepentantly honest about the cathartic nature of the endeavour. Yet both the births are presented in a no-holds-barred sort of way, sparing the audience from any measure of sentimentality. This film would make an amazing educational resource for midwife teachers and childbirth educators, as well as others.”

Lorna Kirk, Practising Midwife 2008
“A very intense and gripping film, Born is marked by an immediacy and purity of instance. The images in this film are hard to confront yet the film leaves us quiet and composed for it subtly gestures towards man’s ultimate insignificance before nature.”